Local News

Former Reformer intern speaks from Malaysia about airplane mystery

By BOB AUDETTE / Reformer Staff

Posted:
03/18/2014 05:43:12 PM EDT

Updated:
03/18/2014 05:57:59 PM EDT

Children read messages and well wishes displayed for all involved with the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH370 on the walls of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia. (AP photo) (-)

BRATTLEBORO -- Nearly 30 years ago, a young Malaysian came to the
United States as part of newspaper exchange program and found himself
behind a desk at the Reformer.

"I found it to be a very welcoming community here," said Soo Ewe Jin,
who is now an executive editor at The Star, Malaysia's most widely
read English language newspaper.

Speaking via Skype from his home in Kuala Lumpur, Ewe Jin said he came
to Vermont in 1986 as participant in the American Society of
Newspapers Exchange Fellowship program. He was asked which paper he
would like to intern at and simply said a community newspaper.

"They chose for me the Brattleboro Reformer," he said.

At 26, Ewe Jin had just gotten married, and had hoped that his wife
could accompany him to the U.

Soo Ewe Jin (submitted photo)

S. as a honeymoon, but that never panned
out.

"We still haven't had a honeymoon," he said with a laugh.

The Reformer reached out to Ewe Jin to ask about his reading of the
mood in Malaysia during the mystery of the disappearance of Flight
370, which was last in contact with flight controllers at 1:19 a.m. on
March 8 with a voice message from the cockpit: "All right, good
night." The Boeing 777's transponder went silent two minutes later.

Flight 370 veered from its original course, with a destination of
Beijing, and was last tracked at 2:15 a.m. over the Straits of
Malacca. At 8:11 a.m., the plane's systems emitted a satellite ping
that could have come from somewhere in Kazakhstan, the Indian Ocean or
the Java Sea. Twenty-six nations are involved in the search, but so
far, the airplane seems to have vanished.

"Everyone in Malaysia is talking about it," said Ewe Jin, who penned a
column for The Star on March 16, detailing his own indirect connection
to the mystery.

"I have been looped together with a group of old friends from Penang
Free School where information is shared freely, with a personal tinge
to it," he wrote. "The captain of the flight, Captain Zaharie Ahmad
Shah, is our schoolmate -- two years our junior.

Soo Ewe Jin sits at a computer terminal in the Reformer newsroom in 1986.

"

While Ewe Jin never met the captain, he was told by the school's
headmaster that Zaharie Ahmad Shah was in one of the top classes that
ever graduated from the school.

"He was described as an extremely bright boy and my classmates who
knew him said he was a very nice fellow and very professional."

As in the United States and around the world, said Ewe Jin, conspiracy
theories abound. He said while the alternative press has been printing
some pretty wild theories, the mainstream press has been more cautious
about its reporting.

"The drama is still unfolding but let us try not to be dramatic for
all the wrong reasons," he wrote in his March 16 column.

"At the same time, there is so much information, just one thing after
another, and the facts are very hard to pin down," he told the
Reformer. "Things are changing every day."

He added that authorities have been learning as they go about how to
best present the facts as they change.

"In some strange ways, I agree that the information dissemination has
been far from ideal," wrote Ewe Jin, "I will not rush to judgment to
condemn those who are currently on the frontline. Every day, I can see
how tired these people are. We may be able to view things from a safe
distance, but we will never be able to feel what they are going
through."

Nonetheless, while the mystery remains unsolved, there is a vein of
hope that runs through Malaysia, he said, with many people wearing new
T-shirts emblazoned with the word "Hope" and Flight 370.

"We are praying for a miracle," he said, adding the disappearance has
drawn people closer together. "We have hope, but there is a reality
..."

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